Quasi
an outlet for young writers
May 15, 2002
Volume 1, Issue 7
Middle Ground is Scarce
Quasi earmarked itself somewhat with this issue. That’s okay, too, with me.
I don’t like extremists, and while I think there are rights and wrongs, I don’t like pushing things down people’s throats. And I don’t like it when they try to push stuff down mine.
But this issue doesn’t push anything down anyone’s throat. What it does do is identify certain things as wrong and certain things as right.
The danger of doing this is becoming self-righteous, and focusing more on how others are doing wrong, instead of one’s self.
Of course, the other danger is to give up and adopt the attitude that wrong and right don’t really exist—it’s what you make of it—and then the world goes to pieces faster than you say, “Stop!”
Quasi will remain a publication that believes rights and wrongs should not be assumed, or taken with no proof.
Exploration is good, curiosity is good, questioning is good.
But there are limits. I think that’s what Mouthin’ Off reacts to. Society is infected with an attitude of relativism, and relativism leads to nihilism, and nihilism to destruction.
One other thing is important: I want every writer and reader to understand that talking about wrong things, and about the people who do them, is not a way of putting people down. Morality is not a cudgel.
Morality is about God, no matter how people try to explain it away. And Quasi will not shy away from that.
-- Jon Ward
...
Desperate Hands – A Scenario
by Melinda Kummer
Jeannette faced the full-length mirror hanging from the back of the closed door. Desperately, desperately. Vain attempts did not discourage or dispel the hallucination of not being thin enough. One hundred and forty pounds stretched thin over the height of her 5'8" frame, yet the mirror pointed to skin near her belly button that she could pinch between her fingers.
Turning, she looked over her shoulder and in the mirror sighted a fatty roll in the soft skin on the upper part of her thigh. Even her hands appeared chubby. Left-handed deceit - was it even her own hand? Maybe it was the hand of society stuffing its "Barbie doll" figure ideal through her pursed lips.
She stared deep into the cold porcelain bowels, looking for peace, as her abdominal muscles began to tremor. She braced her arms against the walls of the stall as a waterfall of partially digested food spilled to the previously calm pool of water. Cleaning the back of her throat, she spat disdainfully into the toilet before lifting her Steve Madden clad foot to push the lever that would flush the ugliness and pain out of her life.
Relief came when the filthy water disappeared, her eyes darting to the dial slung around her right wrist. Less than a minute had passed. Everything was perfectly fine, she reassured herself as she unlocked her stall and approached the sink. She was always ok, and it unnerved her that people would think she wasn't. After all, if she wasn't fine she would say that so. Fine was a relative term anyway and she had purposed that she wouldn't be defined by an accepted relative meaning of it. Habitually washing her hands, she noticed hairs at the crown of her head that had frizzed under the stress of her other habit. She tried to smooth them out.
Pulling a stick of Big Red from her pocket, she wanted to rid her taste buds of the horrendous flavor. She reapplied some chap stick, rubbed her lips together, filled her lungs, and then lifted her chin as she left her secret palace.
In Jeannette's mind, the pop princesses walking on the beach in sarongs made her do it. Perfect Rachael - accumulating popularity and A's in biology - made her do it. But it was her hand, her very own hand that perpetually forced itself into her life as the terrorist of throat, mind, and soul.
...
Slam This! Poet’s Forum
Enemy
Anonymous
I stood in the mirror
a young man
healthy, handsome, tall
my own worst enemy
for if I could not disregard
the lies of society
deifying looks over hard work
i would starve
If I could not climb over
the precipice of my own ego
inflated by TRL’s screaming girls
In the valley of despair I’d stay
If I could not listen
to the voice of God
telling me status was bunk
waiting tables wouldn’t do
But on my way out the door
I heard a voice, His voice
telling me status was bunk
because I was a sinner
Because He was in control
I didn’t have to listen to voices
screaming success and stock options
I could follow confidently where He led
Startled eyes looked back at me
realizing they held power to impress
but if I stopped there, my life
would amount to nothing.
...
Mouthin’ Off
Jon Ward
The Water’s Muddy—Let’s Clear It Up
It is not fun, or easy, to tell others they are wrong. Many times, it is not advisable, and the smart thing is to let people find things out for themselves.
But sometimes, I have been realizing lately, there are people who are wrong, and one must argue with them not to persuade them they are wrong, but to persuade others that those people are wrong.
There is a movement—I guess you could call it that—which is one such group of people. This group is pedophiles, and their allies.
Interestingly, pedophilia literature has received much more scrutiny lately precisely because of the scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.
Somebody shined a light in the Catholic church, and a thousand cockroaches scurried to hide.
It turns out these cockroaches have been busy while we haven’t been looking, not only in Catholicism but in academia.
With only some shallow research, I learned of articles in the last several years which have been arguing for the merits of having sex with children.
One such article was titled “The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality, and Pedophilia.” Harris Mirkin, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri, wrote it and it was published in the Journal of Homosexuality in 1999.
In the article, Prof. Mirkin argues that pedophiles are in the same position as blacks, women and homosexuals have been: they are oppressed because the majority of society believes they are wrong.
Mirkin writes, “Like homosexuality, the concept of child molestation is a culture- and class-specific modern creation.”
If that doesn’t make sense, what he means is that the only reason we all think child molesters are perverts is because everybody else does.
“But it’s gross!” you say.
“You only think that because you’ve been taught to by the status quo,” Mirkin would respond.
Mirkin has been vilified recently by the very “social majority” he targets in his article. The Kansas City Star published an article about his paper, and the Missouri House of Representatives subsequently cut a $100,000 from the University’s appropriation.
Mirkin was on “The O’Reilly Factor,” a politics/current events show on the conservative Fox News Channel hosted by Bill O’Reilly, a conservative pundit. O’Reilly, loud, smart, eloquent and abrasive, tore Mirkin to shreds, starting slowly with straight questions but then losing his patience and openly berating Mirkin when the professor would not openly call pedophilia “wrong.”
Listen to some other things that pedophilia advocates have said, and the situation becomes clearer.
The same publication, the Journal of Homosexuality, published an entire issue exploring the topic of what they called “Male Intergenerational Intimacy,” back in 1990. Even in the title, you see the use of large words and verbal gymnastics in the attempt to anesthize the reader’s brain from being alarmed. Perhaps if the issue was titled, “Men Having Sex with Children,” people might not like that so much. It might sound wrong.
In fact, it would sound wrong, because the act of having sex with children is wrong.
In that issue, Dr. Gunter Schmidt wrote of pedophilia, "Each individual case must be looked upon on its own merits...the threat to make all pedophile acts punishable by law can barely be labeled civilized...it implies discrimination and persecution of a minority and should be abolished."
In another article, the author says that one-third of the pedophiles he has studied claimed that "their sexual desire for children is a natural part of their constitution. This desire is variously described as 'inbred,' 'innate,' 'a fact of nature,' 'inherent in them,' etc.”
The same article reports that many pedophiles feel they were born that way, and thus have the right to carry out their “natural” desires.
I have an announcement: I feel I was born with the desire to kill one person every day, and just because most people think that is wrong does not make it so. So I feel I have the right to carry this desire out—it is only natural—and if I am arrested it will be because the majority of society wants to suppress and oppress me.
For you literalists, that was a joke. But seriously, where does all this leave us?
I think the most interesting aspect of this troubling topic is in our society’s response. This is a highly moral issue, but America today does not like morals. We are a nation of pragmatists, because morality comes from God, who would keep us accountable, but common sense and decency comes from us, and if we can hold things down ourselves, we’d much rather do it our own way, rather than someone else’s.
However, relativism, or the perspective of “truth is what you feel is true, or right,” does not work.
Take, for example, the reaction of The New Yorker magazine to Mirkin’s article. They called it “silly,” and while they defended his First Amendment right to write it, they criticized what he said.
But only on pragmatic grounds. They tried to refute Mirkin’s claim that pedophiles are alike to slaves by saying, “Surely the prohibition of pedophilia is part of the movement for civil and sexual freedom—in this case, the freedom of children from grownups who are in positions of authority over them, such as, for example, their priests.”
What I have to say to that is, pedophilia is prohibited because it is wrong. That’s it. It is wrong.
It is wrong for so many reasons, but mainly because of something having to do with God. God made man for a woman and women for a man. The Bible speaks on this. It prohibits adultery, exhorts men and women to delight in one mate, under the covenant of marriage, and prohibits what is called sexual immorality. Pedophilia is just that: sexually immoral. It is unnatural. It is evil.
On that, I have no problem being black and white.
...
an outlet for young writers
May 15, 2002
Volume 1, Issue 7
Middle Ground is Scarce
Quasi earmarked itself somewhat with this issue. That’s okay, too, with me.
I don’t like extremists, and while I think there are rights and wrongs, I don’t like pushing things down people’s throats. And I don’t like it when they try to push stuff down mine.
But this issue doesn’t push anything down anyone’s throat. What it does do is identify certain things as wrong and certain things as right.
The danger of doing this is becoming self-righteous, and focusing more on how others are doing wrong, instead of one’s self.
Of course, the other danger is to give up and adopt the attitude that wrong and right don’t really exist—it’s what you make of it—and then the world goes to pieces faster than you say, “Stop!”
Quasi will remain a publication that believes rights and wrongs should not be assumed, or taken with no proof.
Exploration is good, curiosity is good, questioning is good.
But there are limits. I think that’s what Mouthin’ Off reacts to. Society is infected with an attitude of relativism, and relativism leads to nihilism, and nihilism to destruction.
One other thing is important: I want every writer and reader to understand that talking about wrong things, and about the people who do them, is not a way of putting people down. Morality is not a cudgel.
Morality is about God, no matter how people try to explain it away. And Quasi will not shy away from that.
-- Jon Ward
...
Desperate Hands – A Scenario
by Melinda Kummer
Jeannette faced the full-length mirror hanging from the back of the closed door. Desperately, desperately. Vain attempts did not discourage or dispel the hallucination of not being thin enough. One hundred and forty pounds stretched thin over the height of her 5'8" frame, yet the mirror pointed to skin near her belly button that she could pinch between her fingers.
Turning, she looked over her shoulder and in the mirror sighted a fatty roll in the soft skin on the upper part of her thigh. Even her hands appeared chubby. Left-handed deceit - was it even her own hand? Maybe it was the hand of society stuffing its "Barbie doll" figure ideal through her pursed lips.
She stared deep into the cold porcelain bowels, looking for peace, as her abdominal muscles began to tremor. She braced her arms against the walls of the stall as a waterfall of partially digested food spilled to the previously calm pool of water. Cleaning the back of her throat, she spat disdainfully into the toilet before lifting her Steve Madden clad foot to push the lever that would flush the ugliness and pain out of her life.
Relief came when the filthy water disappeared, her eyes darting to the dial slung around her right wrist. Less than a minute had passed. Everything was perfectly fine, she reassured herself as she unlocked her stall and approached the sink. She was always ok, and it unnerved her that people would think she wasn't. After all, if she wasn't fine she would say that so. Fine was a relative term anyway and she had purposed that she wouldn't be defined by an accepted relative meaning of it. Habitually washing her hands, she noticed hairs at the crown of her head that had frizzed under the stress of her other habit. She tried to smooth them out.
Pulling a stick of Big Red from her pocket, she wanted to rid her taste buds of the horrendous flavor. She reapplied some chap stick, rubbed her lips together, filled her lungs, and then lifted her chin as she left her secret palace.
In Jeannette's mind, the pop princesses walking on the beach in sarongs made her do it. Perfect Rachael - accumulating popularity and A's in biology - made her do it. But it was her hand, her very own hand that perpetually forced itself into her life as the terrorist of throat, mind, and soul.
...
Slam This! Poet’s Forum
Enemy
Anonymous
I stood in the mirror
a young man
healthy, handsome, tall
my own worst enemy
for if I could not disregard
the lies of society
deifying looks over hard work
i would starve
If I could not climb over
the precipice of my own ego
inflated by TRL’s screaming girls
In the valley of despair I’d stay
If I could not listen
to the voice of God
telling me status was bunk
waiting tables wouldn’t do
But on my way out the door
I heard a voice, His voice
telling me status was bunk
because I was a sinner
Because He was in control
I didn’t have to listen to voices
screaming success and stock options
I could follow confidently where He led
Startled eyes looked back at me
realizing they held power to impress
but if I stopped there, my life
would amount to nothing.
...
Mouthin’ Off
Jon Ward
The Water’s Muddy—Let’s Clear It Up
It is not fun, or easy, to tell others they are wrong. Many times, it is not advisable, and the smart thing is to let people find things out for themselves.
But sometimes, I have been realizing lately, there are people who are wrong, and one must argue with them not to persuade them they are wrong, but to persuade others that those people are wrong.
There is a movement—I guess you could call it that—which is one such group of people. This group is pedophiles, and their allies.
Interestingly, pedophilia literature has received much more scrutiny lately precisely because of the scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.
Somebody shined a light in the Catholic church, and a thousand cockroaches scurried to hide.
It turns out these cockroaches have been busy while we haven’t been looking, not only in Catholicism but in academia.
With only some shallow research, I learned of articles in the last several years which have been arguing for the merits of having sex with children.
One such article was titled “The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality, and Pedophilia.” Harris Mirkin, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri, wrote it and it was published in the Journal of Homosexuality in 1999.
In the article, Prof. Mirkin argues that pedophiles are in the same position as blacks, women and homosexuals have been: they are oppressed because the majority of society believes they are wrong.
Mirkin writes, “Like homosexuality, the concept of child molestation is a culture- and class-specific modern creation.”
If that doesn’t make sense, what he means is that the only reason we all think child molesters are perverts is because everybody else does.
“But it’s gross!” you say.
“You only think that because you’ve been taught to by the status quo,” Mirkin would respond.
Mirkin has been vilified recently by the very “social majority” he targets in his article. The Kansas City Star published an article about his paper, and the Missouri House of Representatives subsequently cut a $100,000 from the University’s appropriation.
Mirkin was on “The O’Reilly Factor,” a politics/current events show on the conservative Fox News Channel hosted by Bill O’Reilly, a conservative pundit. O’Reilly, loud, smart, eloquent and abrasive, tore Mirkin to shreds, starting slowly with straight questions but then losing his patience and openly berating Mirkin when the professor would not openly call pedophilia “wrong.”
Listen to some other things that pedophilia advocates have said, and the situation becomes clearer.
The same publication, the Journal of Homosexuality, published an entire issue exploring the topic of what they called “Male Intergenerational Intimacy,” back in 1990. Even in the title, you see the use of large words and verbal gymnastics in the attempt to anesthize the reader’s brain from being alarmed. Perhaps if the issue was titled, “Men Having Sex with Children,” people might not like that so much. It might sound wrong.
In fact, it would sound wrong, because the act of having sex with children is wrong.
In that issue, Dr. Gunter Schmidt wrote of pedophilia, "Each individual case must be looked upon on its own merits...the threat to make all pedophile acts punishable by law can barely be labeled civilized...it implies discrimination and persecution of a minority and should be abolished."
In another article, the author says that one-third of the pedophiles he has studied claimed that "their sexual desire for children is a natural part of their constitution. This desire is variously described as 'inbred,' 'innate,' 'a fact of nature,' 'inherent in them,' etc.”
The same article reports that many pedophiles feel they were born that way, and thus have the right to carry out their “natural” desires.
I have an announcement: I feel I was born with the desire to kill one person every day, and just because most people think that is wrong does not make it so. So I feel I have the right to carry this desire out—it is only natural—and if I am arrested it will be because the majority of society wants to suppress and oppress me.
For you literalists, that was a joke. But seriously, where does all this leave us?
I think the most interesting aspect of this troubling topic is in our society’s response. This is a highly moral issue, but America today does not like morals. We are a nation of pragmatists, because morality comes from God, who would keep us accountable, but common sense and decency comes from us, and if we can hold things down ourselves, we’d much rather do it our own way, rather than someone else’s.
However, relativism, or the perspective of “truth is what you feel is true, or right,” does not work.
Take, for example, the reaction of The New Yorker magazine to Mirkin’s article. They called it “silly,” and while they defended his First Amendment right to write it, they criticized what he said.
But only on pragmatic grounds. They tried to refute Mirkin’s claim that pedophiles are alike to slaves by saying, “Surely the prohibition of pedophilia is part of the movement for civil and sexual freedom—in this case, the freedom of children from grownups who are in positions of authority over them, such as, for example, their priests.”
What I have to say to that is, pedophilia is prohibited because it is wrong. That’s it. It is wrong.
It is wrong for so many reasons, but mainly because of something having to do with God. God made man for a woman and women for a man. The Bible speaks on this. It prohibits adultery, exhorts men and women to delight in one mate, under the covenant of marriage, and prohibits what is called sexual immorality. Pedophilia is just that: sexually immoral. It is unnatural. It is evil.
On that, I have no problem being black and white.
...
posted by Jon at
11:58 PM
